TOMMY WIDEAWAKE

TOMMY

WIDEAWAKE

BY

H. H. BASHFORD

Published by JOHN LANE

The Bodley Head

NEW YORK AND LONDON

MCMIII

Copyright, 1903

By John Lane

CONTENTS

[I]

IN WHICH FOUR MEN MAKE A PROMISE

We were sitting round the fire, in the study—five men, all of us middle-aged and sober-minded, four of us bachelors, one a widower.

And it was he who spoke, with an anxious light in his grey eyes, and two thoughtful wrinkles at the bridge of his military nose.

"Tommy," he observed, "Tommy is not an ordinary boy."

We were silent, and I could see the doctor's lips twitching beneath his moustache, as he gazed hard into the fire, and sucked at his cigar. The colonel knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and resumed:

"I suppose," he said, "that it is a comparatively unusual circumstance to find five men, unrelated by birth or marriage, who, having been friends at school and college and having reached years of maturity, find themselves resident in the same village, with that early friendship not merely still existent, but, if I may say so, stronger than ever."

We nodded.

"It is unusual," observed the vicar.

"As you know," proceeded the colonel, a little laboriously, for he was a poor conversationalist, "the calls of my profession have forbidden me, of late years, to enjoy as much of your company as I could have wished—and now, after a very pleasant winter together, I must once again take the Eastern trail for an indefinite period."

We were regretfully silent—perhaps also a little curious, for our friend was not wont to discourse thus fully to us.

The poet appeared even a little dismayed, owing, doubtless, to that intuition which has made him so justly renowned in his circle of admirers, for the colonel's next remarks filled us all with a similar emotion.

"Dear friends," he said, leaning forward in his chair, and placing his pipe upon the whist table, "may I—would you allow me so to trespass on this friendship of ours, as to ask for your interest in my only son, Thomas?"

For a minute all of us, I fancy, trod the fields of memory.

The poet's thoughts hovered round a small grave in his garden, wherein lay an erstwhile feline comrade of his solitude, whose soul had leaped into space at the assault of an unerring pebble.

The vicar and the doctor would seem to have had similar reminiscences—and had I not seen a youthful figure wading complacently through my cucumber frames? We all were interested in Tommy.

Another chord was touched.

"He is motherless, you see, and very alone," the colonel pleaded, as though our thoughts had been audible.

We remembered the brief bright years, and the long grey ones, and steeled our hearts for service.

"I have seen so little of him, myself," continued the colonel. "He is at school and he will go to college, but a boy needs more than school and college can give him—he needs a hand to guide his thoughts and fancies, and liberty, in which they may unfold. He needs developing in a way in which no school or college can develop him. I would have him see nature, and learn her lessons; see men and things, and know how to discern and appreciate. I would have him a little different—wider shall I say?—than the mere stereotyped public-school and varsity product—admirable as it is. I would have him cultured, but not a worshipper of culture, to the neglect of those deeper qualities without which culture is a mere husk.

"I would have him athletic, but not of those who deify athletics.

"Above all, I would have him such a gentleman as only he can be who realises that the privilege of good birth is in no way due to indigenous merit."

He paused, and for a while we smoked in silence.

"He will, of course, be away at school for the greater part of each year. But if you, dear friends, would undertake—in turn, if you will—to supervise his holidays, I should be more than grateful. We grown men regard our life in terms—a boy punctuates his, by holidays—and it is in them, that I would beg of you to influence him for good."

He turned to the poet.

"Tommy," he said, "has, I feel sure, a deeply imaginative nature, and I am by no means certain that he is not poetical. In fact, I believe he once wrote something about a star, which was really quite creditable—quite creditable."

The poet looked a little bewildered.

"And I believe that Tommy has scientific bents"—the colonel looked at the doctor, who bowed silently.

Then he regarded me a little doubtfully—after a pause.

"Tommy is not an ordinary boy," he repeated, somewhat ambiguously I thought. Lastly, he turned to the vicar, "I could never repay the man who taught my boy to love God," he said simply, and we fell once more to our silence, and our smoking, while the flames leaped merrily in the old grate, and flung strange shadows over the black wainscot and polished floor.

Camslove Grange was old and serene and aristocratic, an antithesis, in all respects, to its future owner, whose round head pressed a pillow upstairs, while his spirit wandered, at play, through a boy's dreamland. The colonel waved his hand.

"It will all be his, you see, one day," he said, almost apologetically, "and I want the old place to have a good master."

I have said that the colonel's request had filled us with dismay, and this indeed was very much the case.

We all had our habits. We all—even the doctor, who was the youngest of us by some years—loved peace and regularity. Moreover, we all, if not possessed of an actual dislike for boys, nevertheless preferred them at a considerable distance.

And yet, in spite of all these things, we could not but fall in with the colonel's appeal, both for the sake of unbroken friendship—and in one case, at least (he will not mind, if I confess it), for the sake of a sweet lost face.

And so it came about that we clasped hands, in the silence of the old study, where, if rumour be true, more than one famous treaty has been made and signed, and took upon our shoulders the burden of Thomas, only son of our departing friend.

The colonel rose to his feet, and there was a glad light in his eyes. He held out both hands towards us.

"God bless you, old comrades," he said. Then, in answer to a question,

"Tommy returns to school, to-morrow, for the Easter term, and his holiday will be in April, I fancy. To whom is he to go first?"

We all looked at each other with questioning eyes—then we looked at the fire.

The silence began to get awkward.

"Shall we—er—shall we toss—draw lots, that is?" suggested the vicar, rather nervously.

The idea seemed good, and we resorted to the time-honoured, yet most unsatisfactory, expedient of spinning a penny in the air.

The results, combined with a process of exclusion, left the choice between the poet and the doctor.

The vicar spun, and the poet called. "Heads!" he cried, feverishly.

And heads it was.

A smile of relief and triumph was dawning on the doctor's face, when the poet looked at him, anxiously.

"Is there not—" he asked. "Is there not a method of procedure, by which one may call thrice?"

"Threes," remarked the vicar, genially.

"Of course there is—would you like me to toss again?"

"I—I think I would," said the poet, meekly. Then turning, apologetically, to the colonel,

"It's better to make quite sure, don't you think?"

The doctor looked a little crestfallen, but agreed, and the vicar once more sent the coin into the air.

"Tails," cried the poet, and as the coin fell, the sovereign's head lay upward.

The poet drew a deep breath.

"It would seem," he said, bowing to the doctor, "that Tommy may yet become your guest."

"There is another go," said the doctor, and the vicar tossed a third time.

"Heads," cried the poet, and heads it proved to be.

The poet wiped his forehead, after which the colonel grasped his hand.

"Write and tell me how he gets on," he said. "I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you—to all of you."

"No, of course not—that is, it's nothing you know—only too delighted to have the dear boy," stammered the poet. "Er—does he—can he undress himself and—and all that, you know?"

The colonel laughed.

"Why, he's thirteen," he cried.

A little later we took our departure.

In a shadowy part of the drive the poet pulled my sleeve.

"Can boys of that age undress themselves and brush their own teeth, do you suppose?" he asked.

"I believe so," I answered.

The poet shook his head sorrowfully.

"I don't know what Mrs. Chundle will say," he remarked.

And at the end of the drive we parted, with averted looks and scarce concealed distress, each taking a contemplative path to the hitherto calm of his bachelor shrine.

[II]

IN WHICH TWO RATS MEET A SUDDEN DEATH

"The country is just now at its freshest," said the poet, waving his hand towards the open window and the green lawn. "The world is waking again to its—er, spring holiday, Tommy, and you must be out in the air and the open fields, and share it while you may."

The poet beamed, a little apprehensively it is true, across the breakfast table at Tommy, who was mastering a large plate of eggs and bacon with courage and facility.

"It's jolly good of you to have me, you know," observed Tommy, pausing a moment to regard his host.

"On the contrary, it is my very glad privilege. I have often felt that my youth has been left behind a little oversoon—I am getting, I fancy, a trifle stiff and narrowed. You must lead me, Tommy, into the world of action and sport—we will play games together—hide and go seek. You must buy me a hoop, and we will play marbles and cricket—" and the poet smiled complacently over his spectacles.

Tommy wriggled a little uneasily in his chair, and looked out of the window.

The trees were bending to the morning wind, which sang through the budding branches and hovered over the garden daffodils. Away beyond the lawn and the meadows the hills rose clear and bracing to the eye, and through a chain of willows sped the wavering blue gleam of sunny waters.

"I—I'm an awful duffer at games," said Tommy, with a blush on his brown cheeks, and horrid visions of the poet and himself bowling hoops.

The poet drew a deep breath of relief.

"You love nature, dear boy—the sights and sounds and mysteries of the hedgerow and the stream—is it not so?"

"Yes," said Tommy, dubiously. "I—I'm rather a hot shot with a catapult."

The poet gazed out across the garden. A small green mound beneath the chestnut tree marked the grave of the fond Delicia—a tribute to Tommy's skill.

Involuntarily, the poet sighed.

Tommy looked up from the marmalade.

"You don't mind, do you?" he asked anxiously.

"No, no, of course not, dear boy," said the poet with an effort. "That is—you—you won't hit anything, will you?"

"Rather," cried Tommy. "You jolly well see if I don't."

Delicia's successor looked up from her saucer on the rug, and the "Morning Post" slipped from the poet's nerveless grasp.

"You—oh Tommy, you will spare the tabby," he gasped tragically, indicating the rug and its occupant.

Tommy grinned.

"All right," he said,—adding as a comforting afterthought, "And cats are awful poor sport, you know—they're so jolly slow."

But the poet was far away.

With every meal Mrs. Chundle brought a pencil and paper, for as likely as not inspiration would not scorn to come with coffee or hover over a rasher of bacon. And it was even so, at this present.

Tommy watched the process with some curiosity. Then he stole to the window, for all the world was calling him.

But he paused with one foot on the first step, as the poet looked up from his manuscript.

"How do you like this?" he asked eagerly:

Oh the daffodils sing of my lady's gown,
The hyacinths dream of her eyes,
And the wandering breezes across the down,
The harmonies dropt from the skies,
Are full of the song of the love that swept
My citadel by surprise.
Oh the woods they are bright with my lady's voice,
The paths they are sweet with her tread,
And the kiss of her gown makes the lawn rejoice,
The violet lift her head.
Yet, lady, I know not if I must smile
Or weep for the days long sped.

The poet blinked rapturously through his glasses at Tommy, listening respectfully, by the window.

"They're jolly good—but I say, who is she?"

The poet seemed a little puzzled.

"I am afraid I do not comprehend you," he said.

"The lady," observed Tommy. "I didn't know you were in love, you know, or anything of that sort."

The poet rose to his feet, with some dignity.

"I am not in love, Thomas," he said. "I—I never even think about such things." Tommy turned back.

"I say, if you're going to the post-office with that will you buy me some elastic—for my catty, you know?" he said.

Just then the housekeeper entered, and Tommy went out upon the lawn.

"Please, sir, there's a friend o' Mister Thomas's a settin' in the kitchen, an' 'e's bin there a hower, pretty nigh—an' 'is talk—it fairly makes me blood rise, and me pore stomach that sour—an', please, 'e wants ter know if Mister Thomas is ready to go after them rats 'e was talkin' of, an' if the Cholmondeleys, which is me blood relations, 'ad 'eard 'im—Lord."

Mrs. Chundle wiped her brow at this appalling supposition, and the poet gazed helplessly at her.

"Did you say a friend of Mr. Thomas's?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, an' that common 'e—'e's almost took the shine off of the plates."

"Dear, dear! how very—very peculiar, Mrs. Chundle."

A genial, red countenance appeared at the doorway.

"Beg pawdon, sir, but the young gemman 'e wanted me to show 'im a nest or two o' rats down Becklington stream, sir—rare fat uns they be, sir, too."

"I—I do not approve of sport—of slaying innocent beings—even if they be but rodents; I must ask you to leave me."

The poet waved his hand.

The rubicund sportsman looked disappointed. "Beg pawdon, sir, I'm sure. Thought 's 'ow it were all right, sir."

"I do not blame you, my good man. I merely protest against the ruling spirit of destruction which our country worships so deplorably. You may go."

And all this while Tommy stood bare-headed on the lawn, filling his lungs with the morning's sweetness, and feeling the grip of its appeal in his heart and blood and limbs. A sturdy little figure he was, clad in a short jacket and attenuated flannel knickerbockers which left his brown knees bare above his stockings.

The blood in his round cheeks shone red beneath the tan, and there were some freckles at the bridge of his nose. In his hand was a battered wide-awake hat—his usual headgear—and the origin of his sobriquet—for he will, I imagine, be known as Tommy Wideawake until the crack of doom, and, maybe, even after that.

With all his appreciation of the day, however, no word of the conversation just recorded missed his ears, and I regret to say that when the red-cheeked intruder turned a moment at the garden gate, Tommy's right eyelashes trembled a moment upon his cheek while his lips parted over some white teeth for the smallest fraction of a second.

Then he kicked viciously at a daisy and blinked up at the friendly sun.

The poet stepped out on the lawn beside him with a worried wrinkle on his forehead.

"I feel rather upset," he said.

"Let's go for a walk," suggested Tommy.

The poet considered a moment.

An epic, which lagged somewhat, held out spectral arms to him from the recesses of his writing-desk, but the birds' spring songs were too winsome for prolonged resistance, and to their wooing the poet capitulated.

"Let us come," he said, and they stepped through the wicker gate into the water-meadows.

The Becklington brook is only a thin thread here, but lower down it receives tributaries from two adjoining valleys and becomes a stream of some importance, turning, indeed, a couple of mills, before it reaches the Arrowley, which enters the Isis.

The day was hot—one of those early heralds of June so often encountered in late April, and the meadows basked dreamily in the sun, while from the hills came a dull glow of budding gorse.

The poet was full of fancies, and as the house grew farther behind them, and the path led ever more deeply among copse and field, his natural calm soon reasserted itself. From time to time he would jot down a happy phrase or quaint expression, enlarging thereon to Tommy, who listened patiently enough.

Plop.

A lazy ripple cut the surface of the stream, and another, and another.

Tommy lifted a warning hand and held his breath.

Yes, sure enough, there was a brown nose stemming the water.

In an instant Tommy was crouching in the reeds, his hand feeling in his pocket, and his small body quivering.

The poet's mouth was open.

Followed a twang, and the whistle of a small projectile, and the rat disappeared. But the stone had not hit him.

"Tommy!" protested the poet.

But his appeal fell on deaf ears, for Tommy was watching the far side of the stream with an anxious gaze. Suddenly the brown nose reappeared.

He was a very ugly rat.

"Tommy!" said the poet again, weakly.

The rat was making for a bit of crumbled bank opposite, and Tommy stood up for better aim. The poet held his breath.

One foot more and the prey would be lost, but Tommy stood like a young statue—then whang; and slowly the rat turned over on his back and vanished from sight, to float presently—a swollen corpse—down the quiet stream.

"Well hit, sir," cried the poet.

Tommy turned with dancing eyes.

"Jolly nearly lost him," he said. "You should just see young Collins with a catty. He's miles better than me."

But the poet had remembered himself.

"Tommy," he said, huskily, "I—I don't approve of sport of this kind. Cannot you aim at—at inanimate objects?"

"It's a jolly poor game," said Tommy—then holding out the wooden fork, with its pendant elastic.

"Have a try," he said.

The poet accepted a handful of ammunition.

"I must amuse the boy and enter into his sports as far as I may if I would influence his character," he said to himself.

Tommy stuck a clod of earth on a stick some few yards away, at which, for some time, the poet shot wildly enough.

Yet, with each successive attempt, the desire for success grew stronger within him, and when at last the clod flew into a thousand crumbs, he flushed with triumph, and had to wipe the dimness from his glasses.

Oh, poets! it is dangerous to play with fire.

Plop.

And another lusty rat held bravely out into the stream.

"Oh, get him, get him!" cried Tommy, jumping up and down. "Lend me the catty. Let me have a shot. Do buck up."

But the poet waved him aside.

"There shall be no—" he hesitated.

This rat was surely uglier than the last.

"No unseemly haste," concluded the poet.

Did the rat scent danger? I know not, but, on a sudden, he turned back to shelter. And, alas, this was too much for even Principle and Conscience—and whang went the catapult, and lo, even as by a miracle (which, indeed, it surely was), the bullet found its mark.

And I regret to say that the vicar, leaning unnoticed on a neighbouring gate, heard the poet exclaim, with some exultation: "Got him."

"Oh, well hit!" cried Tommy. "By Jove, that was a ripping shot."

The poet blushed at the praise—but alas for human pleasures, and notably stolen ones, for they are fleeting.

"Hullo," said a sonorous voice.

They both turned, and the vicar smiled.

The poet was hatless and flushed. From one hand dangled a catapult; in the other he clutched some convenient pebbles.

"Really," said the vicar, "I should never have thought it."

The poet sighed, and handed the weapon to Tommy.

"Run away now, old chap," he said, "and have a good time. I think I shall go home."

Tommy trotted off into the wood, and the vicar and the poet held back towards the village.

"How goes the experiment?" asked the former, magnanimously ignoring the scene he had just witnessed.

The poet shook his head.

"It is hard to say yet," he replied. "I have not seen any marked development of the poetical and imaginative side of him—and he brings some very queer friends to my house. But he's a good boy, on the whole, and the holidays have only just begun."

In the village street they paused.

"I—I want to go to the post-office," said the poet.

"All right," said the vicar.

"Don't—please don't wait for me," said the poet.

"It's a pleasure," replied the vicar. "The day is fine and young, and it is also Monday. I am not busy."

"I really wish you wouldn't."

The vicar was a man of tact, and had known the poet since boyhood, so he bowed.

"Good day," he said, and strolled towards the parsonage.

The poet looked up and down the long, lazy street. There was no one in sight. Then he plunged into the little shop.

"Some elastic, please," he said, nervously. "Thick and square—for a catapult."

[III]

IN WHICH A HAT FLOATS DOWN STREAM

"And so my boy has taken up his abode with our friend, the poet," wrote the colonel to me. "Do you know, I fancy it will be good for both of them. I have long felt that our poet was getting too solitary and remote—too self-centred, shall I say?

"And yet I have, too, some misgivings as to his power of controlling Tommy—although my faith in Mrs. Chundle is profound.

"Tommy, as you know, is not perhaps quite so strong as he might be, and needs careful watching—changing clothes and so on. You recollect his sudden and quite severe illness just after the Chantrey's garden party last year."

I laid down the letter and smiled, for I had wondered at the time at Tommy's survival, so appalling had been his powers of absorption.

"Poor colonel," I reflected. "He is too ridiculously wrapped up in the young rascal, for anything."

The letter ran on:

"Spare no expense as to his keep and the supplying of his reasonable wishes, but do not let him know, at any rate for the present, that he is heir to Camslove—I think he does not realise it yet—and for a while it is better he should not.

"My greeting to all the brothers. There are wars and rumours of wars in the air of the Northwest...."

I restored the letter to my pocket, and lay back in the grass, beneath the branches.

Wars and rumours of wars—well, they were far enough from here, as every twittering birdling manifested.

The colonel had always been the man of action among us, though he, of us all, had the wherewithal to be the most at ease.

One of those strange incongruities with which life abounds, and which, I reflected, must be accepted with resignation.

I had always rather prided myself upon the completeness with which I had resigned myself to my lot of idleness and obscurity, and to my own mind was a philosopher of no small merit.

I lay back under the trees full of the content of the day and the green woods and abandoned myself to meditation.

Whether it was the spirit of Spring or some latent essence of activity in my being, I do not know, but certain it is that a wave of discontent spread over me—a weariness (very unfamiliar) of myself and my cheap philosophy.

I sat up, wondering at the change and its suddenness, groping in my mind for a solution to the problem.

Could it be that my rule of life was based on a fallacy?

Surely not. Suddenly I thought of Tommy and took a deep breath of the sweet woodland air, for I had found what I had wanted.

Resignation—it was a sacrilege to use the word on such a day.

Yes, I thought, there is no doubt that the instinctive philosophy of boyhood is the true rule of life, as indeed one ought to have suspected long ago.

To enjoy the present with all the capacity of every sense, to regard the past with comparative indifference, since it is irrevocable, and the future with a healthy abandonment, since it is unknown, and to leave the sorrows of introspection to those who know no better—avaunt with your resignation. And even as I said it I saw the reeds by the pool quiver and a pair of brown eyes twinkle joyously at me from their midst.

"Hello, Tommy!" I cried.

He emerged, clad only in an inconspicuous triangular garment about his waist.

"I've been watching you ever so long," he said triumphantly.

"Been bathing?" I asked.

"Rather. It's jolly fine and not a bit cold. I say, you should have seen the old boy potting rats."

"The poet?" I murmured in amaze.

Tommy nodded.

"He is getting quite a good shot," he said. "He was doing awful well till the vicar saw him about an hour ago—an' then he wouldn't go on any more."

"I should think not," said I. "The humanitarian, the naturalist, the anti-vivisectionist, the anti-destructionist—it passes comprehension."

Tommy took a header and came up on to the sunny bank beside me, where he stood a moment with glowing cheeks and lithe shining limbs.

"This is ripping," he said—every letter an italic. "This is just ab-solutely ripping."

I laughed at his enthusiasm, and, as I laughed, shared it—oh the wine of it, of youth and health and spring—was I talking about resignation just now?—surely not.

Tommy squatted down beside me on his bare haunches, with his hands clasped over his knees.

"I have heard from your father to-day," I said.

Tommy grunted, and threw a stick at an early butterfly.

He was always most uncommunicative where he felt most, so I waited with discretion.

"All right?" he queried, presently, in a nonchalant voice.

I nodded.

"He says he's afraid you're not very strong."

Tommy stared, then he looked a little frightened.

"I—of course I'm not very strong, you know," he said thoughtfully, casting a glance down his sturdy young arms. "But I can lick young Collins, an' he weighs seven pounds more than me, an' I can pull up on the bar at gym—"

I hastened to reassure him.

"He referred to your attack last summer, you know, after the Chantrey affair."

Tommy grinned expansively.

"I expect the pater didn't know what it was," he said.

"But I did."

"You—you never told him?" in an anxious voice.

"No."

Tommy sighed.

"The pater does hate a chap being greedy, you see, and—those strawbobs were so awfully good. I couldn't help it—an' father thought I'd got a—intestinal chill, I think he said."

Tommy gave a passing moment to remembrance. Then he jumped up.

"I'm quite dry again," he said, looking down at me. "So I guess I'll hop in."

The remark appeared to me slightly inconsequent, but Tommy laughed and drew back under the shade of the tree. Then came a rush of white limbs, and he was bobbing up again in the middle of the sunny pool.

"Well dived," I cried, encouragingly, but he looked a little contemptuous.

"It was a jolly bad one," he said, "a beastly...." Delicacy forbids me to record the exact word he used, but it ended with "flopper."

He crawled out again, and shook the water from his eyes.

"I say, won't you come in?" he cried eagerly. "It's simply grand in there, and a gravel bottom."

But I am a man of careful habits, and sober ways, with a reputation for some stateliness both of behaviour and bearing, and I shook my head.

Tommy urged again.

"It's not as if you were an old man," he cried.

The thought had not occurred to me. Age, in our little fraternity had been a matter of but small interest. We had pursued the same routine of gentle exercise, and dignified diversion, quiet jest and cultured occupation, for so many years now, that we had seemed to be alike removed from youth and age, in a quiet, unalterable, back-water of life, quite apart from the hurrying stream of contemporary event.

No, I was certainly not an old man, unless a well preserved specimen of forty-eight, with simple habits, can so be styled.

Tommy stood expectant before me, his bare feet well apart, a very embodiment of young health, and, as I looked at him, a horrid doubt crept into my mind—had I—could I possibly have become that most objectionable of persons, a man in a groove?

"Do come," said Tommy.

"Don't be a fool," said Wisdom (only I was not quite sure of the speaker).

I looked round at the meadow, and the wood, and saw that we were alone.

"It is April," I said weakly.

"But it's quite warm—it is really." And so I fell.

To you, O reader, it may seem a quite small matter, but to me it was far from being so, for as I climbed the bank from each glad plunge I felt in my blood a strange desire growing to do something, to achieve, to surmount.

Such emotions I had not known for years—not since—a time, when, on a day, I had set myself to love seclusion and inactivity, and to live in study and retrospect, on the small means that were mine.

Ah, Tommy, never think that if any one desire be unfulfilled, life has therefore lost its sweetness, and its mission, and its responsibility!